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Wow, so much to talk about. This weekend with the inlaws was quite eventful, and pretty much the opposite of what I expected.

The weekend started out rough, they arrived around dinner and were exhausted from the drive. I had a long day too; work then yoga then the grocery store, and then they were waiting for me when I got home. We were all a little crabby, and it took some maneuvering to figure out what we were going to do for dinner, and the result (just like usual) was me and my opinion were the odd man out. The next day went just about the same. They’re all happy to do their thing together, and I just don’t fit in 100%, so unless I push my way in, I’m usually a bit on the edge. Normally this doesn’t bother me that much, but I was finding myself so crabby and angry over our last visit, I just couldn’t seem to muster the energy. I just didn’t have it in me to make all the stupid small talk, and pretend everything was peachy. The result wasn’t pretty, and I was feeling alternately pissed off over some tiny thing MIL said, and then guilty for overreacting. I also managed to totally take it out on G, and scream his ear off a few times. In my defense, he does handle things pretty badly sometimes, but my expectations may have been a tad unrealistic :).

Then this morning rolls around, and suddenly the miraculous happens. MIL actually asked me how I’m doing, you know….’with the whole pregnancies thing’. Not exactly the epitome of sensitivity, but hey, I’m working on keeping my expectations realistic here. I was so not expecting it, and my reaction was just about as awkward as her question. “Well, we’re still trying, but, uh, it’s not going that well, and uh, we’re assuming it won’t work out even when it does, uh, happen’. What followed was totally uncomfortable, I did a lot of staring at my empty breakfast plate, but I tried to remind myself that this is what I asked for. I wanted her to show she cared even a tiny bit by asking how I am. So, I tried to just answer her questions and not get angry, defensive, or close off.

It was a weird conversation in a lot of ways, and part of me isn’t really sure what to make of it. I want to just be happy that she asked at all, and take it slowly, but there are things that grate on me as well. So here are a few of the highlights and low points:

She demonstrated that this has been on her mind. She brought me a book that she read on the drive down here, meaning she went so far as to look for a book about recurrent miscarriage. I never would have expected that.

But, when she gave me the book she told me she ‘skipped all the parts about the feelings and stuff’, because she was mostly concerned with figuring out how the woman in the book solved her problem. I think this perfectly represents how she’s thinking about our situation. To the point that she’s concerned, she’s concerned with fixing the problem, not with how this might be affecting us emotionally.

She said she knows it must be hard for us.

But, she followed that up by saying “Everybody has hard things to deal with”. This statement came up many many times, and eventually I couldn’t hold back from saying, ‘yeah, but honestly I think this is harder than most people’s hard things’. I don’t mean to diminish other people’s problems, and I did say that there are definitely worse things that could happen to us, but to compare infertility to not getting a job promotion or having financial problems is just not fair. It came across like she was telling us we shouldn’t complain because if it wasn’t this it’d be something else.

She made it very clear that she’d be happy if we adopted. This is something I’ve actually worried about. Given how she treats people in general, I could see her making a comment like ‘well, my real grandkids don’t misbehave like that’, or something along those lines. I suppose her saying that she’d be happy if we adopted doesn’t protect from that happening, but it’s a start.

She tried to tell us that, really, not that many people are having babies, its just that we’re paying too much attention.

Oh, and she tried to tell me I should get my cervix sewn shut and go on bedrest. So yeah.

Ultimately, I think it’s good that we’ve made it clear that the lines of communication are open now. I know a lot of people don’t want to talk about their infertility, and I TOTALLY get that. I think the only reason I wanted to in this case is that she already knew the details and had seen how much it was affecting me. There were no secrets left. To not talk about it at that point felt like she was judging me for how I was feeling, or like I should be ashamed of it. As uncomfortable and sometimes grating as the conversation was, I feel like it will be better going forward.

After we talked this morning, I found myself suddenly able to interact with everyone the way I normally do. I wasn’t feeling the extreme resentment I described in my last post, so I could make small talk and listen to MIL’s stories without hiding my face to roll my eyes. When they left this evening, I was able to stand outside and wave goodbye without thinking, ‘thank god they’re gone!.

And when I say that the lines of communication have been opened up, I’m not exaggerating. Not three hours after they left, I got an email from MIL entitled “Natural Ways to Prevent Miscarriage”. She must have been googling in the car, since they shouldn’t even be close to home yet. I opened the link, and immediately started to wonder if I’ve created a monster. It’s My Aunt Jane Knows More Than My RE all over again. This website is the type that drives me completely bonkers, with all kinds of crazy ‘natural’ remedies. It’s not that I don’t think that natural remedies can be good, I mean, I got on board with yoga and meditation. But, there is so much out there that is passed off as ‘medicine’ without a shred of evidence, and it’s exactly the opposite of what she needs to be reading. Case in point, it promotes bed rest as a way to prevent miscarriage. That’s sort of besides the point though, because by sending me something like that it sends the message that either I’m too dumb or lazy to have bothered with a google search myself sometime in the last three years, and/or that there’s something I should have been doing (laying in bed the moment I got a BFP???) that I haven’t been doing, which makes my miscarriages my own fault.

I’m trying not to overreact over the email. I screamed a little at first, then calmed down some. She’s trying to help. She doesn’t realize how it comes across. I’m not sure how to handle it though. Should I ignore it? Respond with some attempt at maturity, and tell her I appreciate the thought, but I’ve read lots of these articles already?

Now, there’s one more aspect of this that’s bothering me, and I’m not sure if I’m being paranoid. In some sort of fit of insanity, the lovable G decided to mention that I have this blog. It was mostly in passing, but I’m pretty sure she got the message. She later asked me how one would find a blog online, because, um, her friend has one. I tried to throw her off and say that you’d really need to have the name of the blog, and lots of people write anonymously, but I can’t be certain she won’t try to find me here. That would be completely and totally awful, given what I’ve written before. As much as I mean everything I’ve said, I only have the nerve to say any of it knowing that no one I know in real life will ever read it. If I haven’t said it before, I’m completely and totally terrified of conflict. So, the question is, am I being paranoid that she could find me? My blog doesn’t exactly pop up in the first set of results on google, but I’m sure if she looked hard enough she could find it eventually. Am I being paranoid here, or should I take down the posts I’ve written about her? Anyone have thoughts??

There’s nothing like a visit from the inlaws to punctuate the tww. I ovulated on Sunday, and my mother and father in law will be arriving Friday night, so just in time for my monthly symptom spotting extravaganza. My plan is to have a sip or two of wine as soon as they get here, just to make sure they don’t start wondering if I’m pregnant. I’m on top of that already, I don’t need any help from them.

My relationship with my mother in law is complicated to say the least (father in law is super sweet, no complaints there really). If you saw us together, you’d think everything was peachy. We interact just fine in person. But under the surface is a lot of resentment on my side, and god knows what on her side.

Our relationship started out rocky from the beginning, all because of religion. G and I are both atheists, but when we first met, his mother didn’t know this about either of us. She assumed G still believed in the Catholicism he was raised in, and since I was raised Jewish, she assumed I was practicing that. When she eventually found out, she assumed that I had ‘turned’ G atheist. As if he didn’t have a mind of his own. So yeah, that was fun. We know this still really bothers her, but instead of handling it directly, both she and G will talk around it, or through his dad. Or she’ll tell the whole extended family what she wants to say to us, figuring one day it’ll get back to us. Queen of passive-aggressiveness that one.

MIL has acknowledged that I’m not all bad though. She knows I have been an extremely good influence in G’s life. When I met him, he had just gone through a bad break up, and was, let’s just say, sowing his wild oats. This was our first year of college, and he was doing drugs and drinking like crazy every weekend, and he was close to failing out of school. He was not headed in a good direction. I can’t say I’m responsible for his turning things around, he deserves all the credit himself, but I think our relationship just gave him something to hold on to, and some motivation. The last time I saw MIL, she actually told me how happy she had been at the time that G met me.

Despite MIL’s issues with me, my issues with her were pretty minimal up until I fell into the infertility hole. Despite her extreme passive-aggressiveness, and a tendency to be the most judgmental person the planet, I didn’t harbor any real negative feelings towards her. But for the last few years things have been getting worse and worse.

To describe the support we’ve gotten from her as luke-warm would be generous. She has barely said two words to us about it, despite knowing the complete and full details right from the very beginning. She might have said she was sorry after the first miscarriage, but with about as much feeling as a robot. Since then, the best she’s done is to tell us it’ll happen when it’s time. How useful, thanks! Maybe you could forward me the memo about when that time might be so I can stop wasting my energy in the meantime. The last D and C I had, she forgot I was having surgery at all, and called G while I was in surgery to tell him stories about his nephew. She never even asked what happened with that pregnancy. Basically the message we’ve gotten from her is let me know when it’s finally good news, until then, don’t bother me with it.

My resentment for her total lack of concern has been building and building over the last 3 years, but it was brought to a head this past summer. We went to visit his family for the 4th of July, right in the midst of my 2nd chemical pregnancy in as many months. I had a BFP, but I’d been having spotting on and off, and the line wasn’t getting darker day to day. I never had a chance to go in for a blood test because we left for the holiday. During the trip, I was basically in limbo, assuming my period would start any time, but still in the back of my mind wondering if it could just maybe be a real pregnancy. Eventually my period did start, a few days after we’d gotten back home.

The day we got in the car for the road trip, I got a text from his sister saying “Saturday morning we’re going to go visit M and the baby in the hospital”, referring to their cousin, who had given birth two days earlier (oh joy). No asking if we wanted to go, no outs available. How is that even remotely fair to ask of us without so much as a thought? Wonder if I have some resentment towards SIL as well?? So the weekend was starting out awesome right from the start.

Saturday morning arrived and we all piled in to the car to head to the hospital. I was in a crappy mood, but I really thought I was in control. Just another shitty day, same old same old. If I’d known how bad it was going to be, I would have made a bigger effort to get out of it. Well, the proverbial shit hit the fan as soon as we got to the hospital. I started getting a little teary-eyed as we walked in, but no biggie, still in control. We made the elevator ride up, and I was getting more jittery by the minute. Then, we stepped out of the elevator into the maternity ward and were in line to get ‘IDs’ to be allowed in to the recovery rooms. The nurse made some offhand comment about not wanting any of the babies to walk off. I have no clue what it was about this statement, or maybe it had nothing to do with that statement and it had just reached a boiling point, but at this point I proceeded to lose. my. shit.

It came over me so fast I barely had time to notice what was happening, and I immediately turned my head and shoved my face into G’s chest to cover the first sounds of the oncoming barrage of tears. He managed to call out, ‘we’re going back down to get coffee’, before I threw myself back into the (luckily still open) elevator. I didn’t turn around, but I could tell we’d gotten their attention. And by ‘their’ I mean, G’s parents, sister and her husband, multiple cousins, and some random bystanders. Even though I made it into the elevator before totally melting down, the elevator door was not moving at my speed. It stayed open for a full and agonizing 3 seconds after I starting sobbing at full volume. And I don’t mean crying, I mean gasping for breath, barely holding myself in a standing positing, sobbing. I have never lost it like this before. Honest, I don’t think I cried this hard after any of the miscarriages, at least not all at once (it was more of a gradual sadness than being overcome like that). I have no idea why it had to be that moment, but it all came out.

We made it downstairs to the lobby, and G got some coffee in me and sat me in a big comfy chair. I drank the coffee and managed to get the crying under control. But I was so completely embarrassed. We couldn’t just go back to the car and wait (no keys, plus we figured they might wait for us up there since we implied we were coming back), but my face was as blotchy and red as a face can get. Would I lose it again if we went back upstairs? How could I walk in to that room to their staring faces, looking like a blubbering fool? I should mention here that not everyone there knew about our situation (including the new mom). What the hell would they possibly think was wrong with me?

Knowing there was no getting out of it, we did eventually go upstairs, and I didn’t lose it again. We walked in to the room with all his family members standing around, preparing for someone to ask if I was okay, or at least give me some sort of reassuring look. Honestly, what I wanted was for someone to say ‘I’m so sorry we made you come here, that was really insensitive of us’. Ha, as if. No one said a damn thing. They barely glanced up when we walked in. When I sat down in a chair as far from the baby as possible, MIL looked over at me with this shit-eating grin and said, “Isn’t she just the cutest!! Look at those little toes!”.

As the day wore on, we kept thinking that SURELY someone would say something eventually. Maybe they just didn’t want to say something in front of the whole family, maybe they wanted to wait for a more appropriate moment to give us some sort of support. Ha. Not a single person ever showed even the smallest sign of concern. We thought, is it possible they didn’t actually notice? No, there was no not noticing, and G remembers seeing them watch us get in to the elevator.

I have no words for how angry and hurt it makes me that no one could be bothered to give me so much as a pat on the shoulder after so public a display. It’s as if someone fell down the stairs in front of you and you didn’t even bother to go check to make sure they were okay. I mean, who ignores someone in that much pain right in their face?? They can’t pretend that I’m fine and none of this is bothering me that much, they’ve seen it. I am just so freaking angry and resentful that they carry on with their lives as if nothing has happened, and my pain doesn’t matter in the least. I’m not the only one bothered by this either, G is really hurt by it as well. But he was raised by the reigning queen of passive-aggressive land, so how do you think he’s handling it?

What gets me the most is MIL should know better. She had two miscarriages before she had SIL. I mean, she’s been through this for godssakes, how can she act like its nothing?? The only explanation I can come up with is that she feels like she got through it, so I should be able to too. Maybe she just thinks I’m being a giant baby and should get the hell over it like she did. I don’t know, but I don’t relish the thought of spending a weekend with someone who feels this way.